13.6.12

Google reveals what's hot in user searches

The Web giant revamps its "Hot Searches" in Google Trends -- rolling out related searches, a more visual display, and extra information on all trending queries.

Hot Searches in Google today.

(Credit: Screenshot by Adarsh vijay)

If you go to Google's "Hot Searches" list, you'll find that the top three searches today were Kevin Durant, Apple, Robin Roberts, and the LA Kings. You'll also see how many times each has been Googled; for example, Apple had more than half a million searches in the past few hours.

All of these features are new with Google's revamp of its U.S. Hot Searches, which it rolled out today.

With Hot Searches in Google Trends, you can see a list of the fastest rising search terms in the U.S. for a snapshot of what's on the public's collective mind," Google software engineer Nimrod Tamir wrote in a blog post. "Now, Hot Searches has gotten a refresh that makes the list of searches more visual, groups related rising search terms together and lets you see more information about those searches."

Similar to trending topics on Twitter, users can catch a glimpse at what is happening in national dialog or find breaking news. To figure out which topics users are gravitating toward, Google uses an algorithm that analyzes million of searches and then classifies them. Hot Searches is updated hourly.

Tamir outlines all of the new Hot Searches features here:

Unlike the previous version of Hot Searches, which always provided 20 daily results, the new page introduces a filtering system that helps us make sure that the list includes only the truly hottest news stories of the day. Also, when a few of the fastest rising search terms refer to the same news story, such as [tony awards 2012] and [audra mcdonald], they're now aggregated into one entry, which lists all the "Related searches" that go along with the main story. Lastly, the new list also provides an indication of how many searches have been conducted for each topic in the 24 hour period when it was trending